AAI Founder James Zogby signs books at UM-Dearborn on Wednesday. PHOTO: Tariq Wahid/TAAN

DEARBORN — While the future of the United States may hinge on happenings in the Middle East, a new book by Washington, D.C.-based Arab American Institute (AAI) Founder and President James Zogby has shed light on just how much Americans still have to learn about the region’s Arab and Muslim inhabitants.

The book, entitled “Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us and Why it Matters,” was released in October 2010 to a warm response from critics.

Zogby, visited the University of Michigan-Dearborn on Wednesday, December 1 to highlight some of the book’s key themes and poll results while also taking questions from audience members.

“The only time you see an Arab on the news is when they’re angry or they kill somebody,” Zogby said.

“But they really care about the same issues as Americans, they’re interested in taking care of their families and they worry about their jobs just like everyone else.

“We try to deal with all of those myths using polling results and hard data as best we can.”

Zogby said that because of limited first-hand exposure to Arab and Muslim culture, people have a tendency to only judge on views taken from television snippets.

He recalled a conversation he had with a neighbor about his former residence of Philadelphia and compared it to life in the Middle East.

“He came over to me and said, ‘Did you really live there? People get murdered there every day?'”

Zogby said that the man had only seen negative newspaper stories about the city and its killings.

But to Zogby, memories of Philadelphia revolved around a tight-knit community enjoying block parties together and the rich cultural ethnic neighborhoods with Italian, German, and Irish roots.

“The heritage and culture made it a great city but he never saw or experienced that because it never made the newspaper,” he said, relating the viewpoint to others on the Middle East.

Zogby also touched on the importance of occupied Palestine to Arabs, saying that it is a “wound that doesn’t heal,” referencing the 1948 Nakba or catastrophe in forceful seizure of lands and subsequent deterioration of the human conditions in Palestine.

“From Lebanon to Morocco to Jordan, Palestine means a lot because people say, ‘They’re Arabs just like me’ and the situation speaks to their vulnerabilities.”

Zogby also spoke about U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in 2009 to the Middle East and Muslim world as being a beacon of hope for many in the region that has since been met with disappointment over the lack of change in U.S policies.

“People have been distressed really that there is no change but that doesn’t deny that speech itself was very important, it had the possibility of being a transformative moment, but words alone as he said aren’t going to do it.”

Zogby also gave insight on another problem, a long legacy of misguided U.S. foreign aid programs in the Arab world.

“The foreign aid to Arab nations has not been real foreign aid.,” he said. “While Israel gets a huge check every October, everyone else’s foreign aid goes to the guys working in the bowels of the state department,” which he said leads to bad decisions.

In past years, he said the programs have produced failed results like $94,000 apartment buildings in Gaza where the average yearly income is only about $600 for example.

“We had multimillion dollar programs about teaching Palestinians to become entrepreneurs when what they really needed was access to capital and importing and exporting rights,” he said, noting that most Palestinians already are smart businessmen considering their constant struggle to provide for their families in the face of the occupation and scarce resources.

“As they say, if you give a Palestinian two nickels they’ll open up a business and if you give them three, they’re buying your business.”

Zogby said a recent meeting in Morocco led by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could offer hope that the aid programs will be constructed with the help of representatives from each country to better serve their needs going forward.

Zogby was asked about myths that Arabs in other countries have about Americans at the end of his discussion.

“I don’t want to make an over-generalization but every Arab seems to think we’re smarter than we are,” he said.

“Without insulting our country, sometimes we make huge mistakes in the Middle East especially that really aren’t smart and show that we don’t know what we’re doing.”

For more information about the AAI, which is expected to hold its fall leadership conference in Michigan in 2011, visit www.aaiusa.org.